


Relinquish

by ernyx



Series: Romanogers fics (for ease of finding) [5]
Category: Marvel, Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Alternate Ending, Blood, Canonical Character Death, F/M, Gen, I honestly haven't decided yet whether I'll continue this and make it shippy or leave it platonic, Past Peggy Carter/Steve Rogers, Post-Avengers: Endgame (Movie), Steve's quest to replace the stones, Suicide, WARNINGS FIRST, okay now the other stuff, romanogers - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-02
Updated: 2019-05-02
Packaged: 2020-02-16 01:09:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18681049
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ernyx/pseuds/ernyx
Summary: “Fine. I relinquish it. I relinquish my power, my heart, my soul. Anything… just please, give her back.”// This is set right towards the end of Avengers: Endgame. Major spoilers inside!





	Relinquish

**Author's Note:**

> Please heed the warnings. There's no actual ideation/depression but it might still be triggering for some people. If l'appel du vide bothers you, don't read this.

     Steve Rogers has an impossible task: restore every stone to its precise place without any delay from the original time that it was taken, all without people noticing. 

     Now there are a couple exceptions here. The time stone he can simply return, and it’s a quick and easy affair to pop in immediately after Bruce has left the Sorcerer Supreme and hand the stone over to her carefully. There’s the power stone, which he can intercept back into its place  _and_ pull a twitching Nebula off the floor with nobody else the wiser. 

     The others are a little more challenging. The Tesseract needs to not only be snuck into the old S.H.I.E.L.D. facility, but the damaged casing on the safe (thanks Tony) needs to be carefully and seamlessly repaired while leaving nobody else the wiser. It takes Steve three separate trips in with all the tools necessary to fix it and re-seal the space stone inside. By the time he’s done, he’s almost too exhausted to pay Peggy a visit, though he very quietly watches her go about her work until she’s got a moment alone. There are no tears in his eyes, only a look of wistfulness for a life that could have been, a love that could have panned out over the decades. She seems happy with her work though, and he spies a photo of her with another man’s arms around her sitting on her cabinet. Perhaps she’s moved on.

     (He’s spent a lot of time lecturing people about moving on. It’s about time that he accepts that it could happen here too. After all, she’s always been more than defined by her relationship with Steve, even if it did spark an entire underground organization. He’s proud of her. He’s _proud_ and he’s not about to hold her back. He tells her so. She tells him that she’s proud of him too.)

     The mind stone is trickier. He swaps out one replacement scepter for another, punches two dozen Hydra guards on the way just because they think he’s Loki so he’s got an excuse, and while it’s tiring and he’s definitely bleeding by the time he’s done because he’s been shot a few times, it’s well worth it. He retreats to a safehouse nearby to proverbially lick his wounds, digging out bandages and medical tape from nooks and crannies where he’d stashed them nearly a decade ago. He hasn’t been successful at reversing the fiasco with the Tesseract in this time, which can only mean that Loki is still out and about with it somewhere in this splinter universe, and while he’s not excited about that, he’s also not sure what the rules are about having yet another go at this whole deal. Maybe if he were Scott, he could go unnoticed multiple times in a scene, but as Steve? It’s just not likely.

     He moves on to the reality stone, stored within the Aether. It feels like a crime to have to put it back _into_ Jane, but she survived the first time, and she’ll have to do so again. He catches her asleep, sends a quick prayer to whichever deity is listening (clearly he’s been spending too much time thinking about Norse mythology) that she’ll be okay, and releases the Aether back to her. She wakes up gasping, body arcing up into the air in a terrifying spectacle, and Steve has to duck behind the curtains in a panic as healers come running in to try to fix a problem that they thought had mysteriously vanished for a while.

     And that leaves the soul stone.

     It’s been left for last mostly because Steve has been dreading this one the most. He doesn’t know if he can simply return something to “a creepy floaty man” (according to Clint) especially when it had required a sacrifice to obtain it. Not to mention, Steve has hardly even come to terms with her death. It had been immensely in character for Natasha to sacrifice herself— she was his best friend, after all, and birds of a feather… but he doesn't want to acknowledge that it had happened, never mind the fact that he's giving up the most powerful of the gems for what seems like nothing. There is nothing to protect here by returning it, nothing gained in return, no exchange that can be made… unless…

     Steve heads to Vormir with a strange sort of anxious hope worming through his chest. 

     He heads up the mountain, following Clint’s instructions, and comes to the carving on the ground. Over the edge of the cliff, he can barely see a figure lying below, with a halo of red hair and blood. It’s more than he can bear to see, and his eyes squeeze shut. He slides to his knees, hands grasping into he fabric of his pants helplessly. His breath comes faster, and he loses the fight against crying.

     “Well, well,” a voice comes from over his shoulder. “It’s amazing how sentiment can bring us so low."

     Steve startles, head whipping around to see who has intruded into his thoughts, only to do a double-take at the familiar face. “What the _hell_ are _you_ doing here?” Steve’s voice is an angry hiss, and it’s only when his eyes drift further down that he realizes the Red Skull has turned into some sort of… well, the only thing he can come up with is one of the Dementors from the Harry Potter movies. His brow knits in confusion. “And what happened to you?”

     The guardian explains how he’s been trapped here for seventy years, watching over the soul stone, and Steve nearly laughs. Of course, Schmidt had never shown anything resembling a soul, never had people he’d loved, or he wouldn’t have been the vicious Nazi scum he’d been in another lifetime. Still, Steve can’t help but wonder how many other soul stone guardians there have been in the past, and whether one is relinquished when the stone is obtained or if they’re stuck here forever. After all, Clint had gotten the stone and Schmidt is still here, floating there like an oversized plastic bag. But the stone seems safe here too, safer than it would be with Steve alone. He knows he’s only human, only fallible.

     “If I return this to you,” the Captain asks slowly, once their conversation comes to a halt, “what do I get in return? You’ve clearly got a job to do here, and I don’t see a need to get in the way of that, but I can’t just return it to you when so great a sacrifice was made for it.”

     The Red Skull laughs. “Oh no, Captain Rogers, you’ve got it all wrong. You must give another sacrifice to return it. Otherwise the soul stone runs free, consuming the souls of as many people as it comes across, causing chaos and greed through the galaxy. There are some who would be happy with that, but you, not so much.”

     “What do you mean, you need another sacrifice?”  
     “You know exactly what I mean.”

     Steve glares at him, shoulders tense with anger. Is this really necessary? All for one stone? And yet he’s felt the _power_ of it, he knows exactly what it could wreak if left unchecked. Desperately, he turns the argument back on Schmidt. “Fine, I’ll make you a deal. My life for hers.”

     The Red Skull appears to think hard about it, and then shrugs. “No promises. I might be able to do it, I might not."

     “This is what you wanted, all those years ago,” Steve murmurs, gritting his teeth. But he knows he wouldn’t do anything else, not him, not the reckless, ridiculous, self-sacrificing man that he is. “Fine. I relinquish it. I relinquish my power, my heart, my soul. Anything… just please, give her back.” He takes a steadying breath, a second one, and then leaps off the edge into the abyss. He barely has time to reconcile the shock of red below him and hold his hands out to her before everything goes black.

**Author's Note:**

> Will I write more of them and have them live? Will they be dead? Who knows? Not me.
> 
> Like it? Hate it? Drop me a line here, leave me a comment, all that jazz. I'll love you forever if you do. Also feel free to send me more ideas, I'm trying to get back on my writing. (For those of you waiting on my WIPs sorry and thank you for your patience!)


End file.
